What is Teamviewer doing to stop scammers and protect its brand?

We are seeing Teamviewer is being blocked by some security systems and networks, eg TalkTalk, to protect users from scammers that use the 'free' version. This must be giving the TeamViewer 'brand' a bad name, as the 'free' software is being used for malicious activities.

What is Teamviewer doing to protect its brand from this, and also protect TeamViewers paying customers that rely on a secure tool to provide legitimate IT Support? These customers may start to look for alternative solutions that are not getting a bad reputation.

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Comments

___Craig

Thank you Alex for your response.

You say if you detect a fraudulent ID you block ,but it is so easy to generate a new ID.

Scamming with teamviewer is prolific, as its free.

Can I give you an example of a real life example?

Many legitimate IT company creates a Teamviewer Quick Support tool, and puts this on the website, say support.itsupportcompany.com, this is built to generate a random password

They advise their customers to go to this website to support them, this is all good.

What is to stop scammers using this legitimate companies website, asking their victims to go to the legitimate site and download the legitimate Quick Support Tool and using it?

What does Teamviewer recommend IT support companies do to stop this fraudulent use of quick support? I would suggest certificates, secondary passwords, policy (whitelists)? Are these things you are working on? When can we expect a more secure Quick Support tool?

AxelSchmidt

Dear __Craig,

Thank you for your message, and the concern you express.

Before I'll answer your questions let me seize this opportunity to stress that we are appalled by the abuse of our product and strongly condemn any criminal act.

Yet it is important to understand that a typical scam scenario does not exploit a structural weakness of our (nor of any other) remote access product. Instead, it hinges on social engineering: Unsuspecting individuals are tricked into believing they have a problem on their computer, and a fake tech supporter offers to resolve that for them if they let the would-be technician access their machine.

While the stories may vary, the bottom line is: the victims typically allow the scammer to access their computer. And that is what we want to help avoid. So among other things we designed a special page that provides easy to understand information, and lets you report a scam. Needless to say: If we identify a fraudulent TeamViewer ID we will block it right away. Our anti-scammer page is available at: https://www.teamviewer.com/report-a-scam/

At the same time, it is worth noting that the overall issue is certainly not a TeamViewer-specific one. In that regard, I would like to point out that TalkTalk (since you mentioned that) filters most remote access tools . However, legitimate users can easily remove the filter (see: https://help2.talktalk.co.uk/online-security/how-turn-homesafe )or have the TalkTalk support lift it for them.

But let me come back to the point what we are doing: We take this matter extremely serious. So we work with organizations all over the world to address the issue and jointly combat scammers. Our activities include regular participations iin anti-fraud initiatives and alliances.